Culture Of Morocco

the Sahara Desert one of the harshest climates in the world a huge expense of unforgiving rock scrub and sand the size of you to me it looks like a place of nothingness but it was from here that a group of desert nomads came to transform the northwest corner of Africa into a vast empire that stretched from the Sahara to Spain what started with one man's mission grew into a kingdom which lasted for centuries its rulers generated tremendous wealth created great architecture and promoted sophisticated ideas in an ordered society they were called the bourbon and they changed this part of Africa forever we know less about Africa's past than almost anywhere else on earth but the scarcity of written records doesn't mean Africa lacks history it's found in artifacts culture and traditions of the people in this series I'm exploring some of the riches the most vibrant histories in the world I'm here in Morocco to explore how a small collection of Berber nomads created a vast Kingdom out of nothing and how the very forces that created that kingdom ultimately helped to destroy 21st century maracas a modern Islamic state whose Arab king claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad he rules over a country with a culture and a history as diverse as its landscape Brooklyn has coasts faced Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea snow-covered mountains almost as high as the Alps and the bone-dry fringes of the Sahara Desert the dominant languages spoken here now are from Arabia and Europe but nearly half the population still speak Berber the language of the indigenous act a thousand years ago this was their land but there was no sense of a nation-state instead on either side of the Atlas Mountains this small independent berber clans of farmers traders and nomads these people were Muslim but they maintain their traditional Berber customs and they didn't always follow Islam to the letter of the law but in the middle Evans century one man changed everything a Berber who'd studied the Quran but had become a charismatic fiery preacher idealistic and uncompromising he had a clear mission to change his fellow Berbers into proper Muslims schooled in the strict fundamentals of their religion his name was Abdullah ibn Yasir and his travels to Islamic centres of learning had left him a student of a strict legalistic interpretation of the Quran he started his mission in the Western Sahara when he pulled together an alliance of tribes and appointed himself a spiritual leader in so doing he started a series of events that completely transformed northwest Africa in the year 1054 he led an army of thousands of nomads and headed for sigil Massa then a major trading post on the edge of the Sahara and one of the most important cities in Africa even yusin and his followers were called Alma Ravitz from a phrase meaning those bound together in the cause of God they were determined to bide everyone to the course they had one simple mission jihad the term jihad today carries connotations for many people of anti-western extremism but even yeah sins holy war his struggle to uphold a true understanding of Islam was aimed at his fellow Muslim purpose this spectacular ruin is now all that's left of Cydia MRSA a city of well over 50,000 people built in the middle of one of the biggest oasis in Africa now required and tranquil backwater the date-palms and irrigated fields hide clues to a much bigger and more significant past and it's on a shingle Bank at the heart of the Oasis where the ruins of the mud built city lie the taking of Sidra masa would be the first major building block of an Alma Ravid Kingdom so what attracted even yes in here the wealth of the city the city was very prosperous in fact it was the commercial hub of Morocco a huge city in a huge oasis dr. Eric grosse has been involved in some of the recent archeological studies here that have confirmed why this was such an important prize for even yesan I call it the Casablanca of a thousand years ago yes because Morocco wasn't looking to Europe or the Atlantic it was looking across the Sahara the Sahara was wide open to trade so there are goods coming from all over the region and they were being traded and exchanged here yes and what sorts of things are being traded cloth manuscripts and books horses also the most important was the gold trading mostly south across the Sahara places like Mali and Senegal today were producing especially gold so gold was the main part of the wealth of the city we know gold coins were minted here they were stabbed here and they were exported and mostly they were exported eastward to Egypt Iraq Central Asia and they ended up in places like India so they're trading tendrils they'd stretch all the way from West Africa as far as South Asia yes absolutely it's a trading powerhouse yes it is and the envy of empires across the continent they all tried to take it and vie add whatever you'd succeeded in doing once they had sital master under their control the armored rabbits said about securing the source of the city's gold trade they crossed a thousand miles back to the opposite side of the Sahara and seized the trading town of Oda hast by controlling the supply of gold across the desert they had a virtual monopoly on this the most lucrative of trades with a considerably strengthened army of weapons and camels taken from city of masa the Almoravids now had what they needed to carry their jihad beyond the Sahara but they couldn't have done any of this without another important resource the key to life itself water sustains everything in this harsh climate and the Berbers had to know how to find and to move it under the desert these are Katara a part of an ancient Berber irrigation system and you see these mounds stretching out across this landscape what you see on the surface belies a very complex network of tunnels that sit underneath the ground funneling the water across this landscape because water was such a rare resource these access jars are all that you see of the gently sloping tunnel system that taps into the underground water table these systems could take water for miles in this very arid dry hot landscape and to take it where it was needed and it just says how the Berber understood this landscape how they worked with it how they used the small resources that they had to their advantage with a powerful army money and the rallying call of Islam eben yes Ian now had the potential crate of bourbon nation the alma Rabbids jihad had an unstoppable momentum but now they wanted to take their brand of Islam to every Berber and that meant crossing the Atlas Mountains the high atlas mountains rised with a thirteen and a half thousand feet they form a natural divide between the desert and the more fertile and populous lands on the other side but these were dangerous times and this was a perilous area to be traveling through a thousand years ago these valleys would have carried one of the main trade routes through the mountains and that made it attractive to thieves if in your sin and his men were in bandit country this is called the road of a thousand cash bars and kaz bars are these fortified houses that were once owned and used by berber merchants these buildings would have often been used to house things like gold and silks that came across the desert and they had to be fortified because this was a dangerous Terrace these are beautiful buildings but their fortifications give a sense of what it was like in those days the armored avid army traversed this hostile environment with four hundred horsemen 800 camellias and 2,000 foot soldiers it was a treacherous journey in an alien landscape thousand years ago when eben yes Ian and his army came up these passes to cross these mountains they were entering completely new tent they were desert warriors and these mountains and everything beyond was a completely different environment to them but they had a clear goal to the northwest of the mountains did the tribes of Berbers of the Almoravids considered to be heretics in 1058 first people to feel the fourth of bibbing yes Ian's army were the rulers of pag Matt a small city nestling in a lush Valley on the north side of the mountains Edmond became the new headquarters from where the army took their jihad to the tribes nearby but it's been difficult for historians to uncover what life was like in AD Matt at the time for one simple reason no one knew where ancients had Matt was it was thought to be a lost city but actually it was right here beneath our feet the deke has revealed only a small portion of the city so far but this hammam or bark house is one of the most substantial and important finds these remains illustrate the scale of the settlement here and show just how expertly they understood how to use water is a foundation of civic society law Yirgacheffe present but not a doll Elysium Abdullah Philly has been slowly unearthing the remains of the buildings here since the dig first started o de la doot doot doot doot doot realization dulu Don liberty mo public Camilla hammam lamas k lu Tali x8 ovando Sivan Eagle mo utilization do don litigation oh hey party Lou salon do compose own laponia compose on say liberty mo public illa bottom of a limousine etc if you are pellet wazoo with risotto support nearly guess your own dish on remarkably this entire building which dates from the time of the armor avid's more than a thousand years ago was excavated almost intact effective mom on wolf girl Salon de PUE Josiah Hammond Omaha school present don't lend a plug on Harmon deluxe IDO usual mo a is a term a effective Madhava hashida architectural exam important say anon con Hammond if a Pokemon Sansom metric Eric skeet exceptional Parham on Tascosa Dumont gusto mo in engine easy T Nevada technique do Shiva or Nevada technique dual Adisa dual element as you all know is absolutely amazing I'm used to seeing their earth build buildings but to see this kind of stone and mortar construction but also the water engineer this is real innovation it's so exciting there was hot and cold running water the temperature of the three rooms increased the near they were to the huge fires that heated the water as it came into the hammam this civilized living Subotica la nación de lu Ramos son tan Phu ho poor Lulu function Oh Mona damn bottom oh you see important car l / may la purificacion de jong lee joongi n DC super Fe a par example in Ferguson n un cuarto de Guzman etc po po Soho posi Pascoe's la hermana dick the system dududu shallow sapper meadow licker e you see paralysis cream these were people who came from the desert for whom water was a precious resource this is more than a bathhouse this is a temple to water and water place the armored events were beginning to appreciate city life but there was a problem for desert nomads this city was just in the wrong place surrounded by mountains and hills on three sides AG map was not in a good defensive position as people most suited to fighting in the open it made them feel vulnerable after a little more than a decade the Almoravids look for a new home a new base from where they could expand and take on even more territory and infidels the almoravids had the desert in their DNA they chose a flat dry open piece of land around 20 miles from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains they pitch their tents and main their city after the Berber words the land of God it was cool Marrakesh the founding of Marrakesh in 1070 represents a point with a loose band of marauding jihadis become an imperial force to be reckoned what began as a collection of tents rapidly became an established city the Berbers who settled him were offered security in return for their taxes and that paid for the further expansion of the armour of its territory the movement seemed unstoppable near when even yesan died while fighting Berber heretics the holy enterprise continued unabated after the death of the fiery preacher even yes in a new man took charge of the jihad his name was Youssef it been - shrill and he made a greater contribution to the dynasty than any other man he turned a fledgling kingdom into an empire while living your sin have been the spiritual leader would inspire the almoravid movement and let it out of the desert even touch film would tape the dynasty even further it began with Marrakech katara were dug to supply water to the growing population and walls were built to surround the street work that we are yes it was me at this time this time specially the walls we will see the walls were made at this time former minister of education professor Muhammad Kennedy knows even tashfeen city well what sort of man was even tested what was he like yes when Dutchman was a very high man very courageous and the beautiful Huntsman this grandson son Sam yes hunter and and he was especially very curious and very very strong man very strong manner that's a big personality and how did he change Marcus you say that here will have a palace he will have comments he will have an administration and he make a very good plan and he began to make instruction of that to realize me yes so he built these streets near the street was made at this time just like as you see it now with the Commerce and with with the sellers the seller of everything vegetables and also spices and with colour smells and the many smells many columns it was like that since since long time since the 11th century some wandering around here you still get a flavour of the days of even test-fit yes of course yeah the rules that living tashfeen Commission have been rebuilt many times but one of his original gates the Bab dakhala still stands huge but it's remarkably simple the ash effector of almoravid is very simple the almoravid was came from the Sahara and they were Muslims and they have the philosophy of Islam which is that you have harmony you have beauty but simplicity I love that the idea of harmony of beauty of simplicity all of those things together in this game and every time you pass through here you're going to remember that and for those people that felt part of this community they were tied together by that simple beautiful philosophy and I think it's a philosophy of life but it's something which begins here that's right the armored event had created a worthy capital now they set about establishing an empire their army took the jihad nor taking city after city expanding their influence east as far as Algiers well beyond what we now call Morocco back in Marrakech the armored average reflected on their extraordinary achievements it had taken 26 years from their first incursion out of the desert with the taking of Sidra mrsa to the point where they control the whole of northwest africa their next move extended the a Marathas jihad beyond anyone's expectations north into Europe a parallel Islamic world that existed in Spain and Portugal since the early 8th century it was called Highlander loose and it had flourished under the Calif of Cordoba into a rich civilization of lavish palaces and elegant gardens now in the 11th century they've broken up into weaker city-states these were being attacked by Christian armies from the north of Spain and the Muslim rulers appealed to the Almoravids for help use of even tashfeen helped repel the Christians but he was disgusted at the decadence of the Muslim princes he'd agreed to help m'intosh Finn had enough of these party princes and their moaning he also disliked their lack of dedication to Islam but he decided he had an obligation to save the souls of their Muslim subjects and in 1090 he returned in force and deposed their rulers one by one the Almoravids now ruled over a vast Kingdom that reached from the Sahara to Spain and from Africa's Atlantic coast to Algeria never before at all this Muslim territory been united under one management one Kingdom United politically and spiritually and it was the so called barbarians of the desert that had done it the beating heart of the kingdom was Marrakesh this was a place where people came to exchange stories ideas stories that have been traded across the desert from as far away as West Africa stories that have come from southern Europe from the Middle East they all ended up here here in the central square in Marrakech by the beginning of the 12th century the square here had become the news hub of the empire but in 1106 the news running around this square was of terrible importance yusuf bin Tashman had died even tashfeen was more than 80 years old when he died he had seen his berber kingdom grow from the founding days of Marrakech to the farthest reaches of his empire but now the warrior king was dead and the mantle of ruler of the Almoravids dynasty passed to even Tash Finn's 23 year old son and a very different era one of power and privilege Alley was the first almoravid leader not to have known the desert or its hardships he knew the royal palace and its luxuries at the time of his father's death the royal treasury has thirteen thousand boxes of silver and five thousand four hundred boxes of minted gold he was loaded the new leader worked hard to make Marrakech even more splendid and he ordered a new palace to be built it was part of a beautification plan for the city which drew heavily on the architectural influences of Andalusia it was thought that no buildings were left that could show us what Anna's grand vision might have looked like then in 1952 buried under some outbuildings they found this the cubot barrio dim it's not only a rare example of our model it architecture but it gives us some sense what this city looked like at the high point of the dynasty this is the Koopa this is the masterpiece the architecture of the almoravid period it is a hospice yes professor Mohamed al-fayed has written extensively on the buildings of Marrakesh and I think that the architects came in from Indonesian Spain they make this this journey is very very beautiful it's unique in the architecture of work look at this simplicity of lines yes and armory of proportions it is absolutely gorgeous so this was a place where people before prayer would come they would watch they would wash their their bodies they wash their bodies and they prepare when they go to the mosque it's a sumptuous building that tells us just what Marrakesh may have looked like must have been in a place with fantastic architecture and also very very wealthy people who yeah we're obviously living the high life it's very rich civilization because Marrakech was a capital of empire like actually we have New York or other cities very important this delicately carved interior is such a contrast to the bold simple shape we see outside it was also highly fashionable these wonderful scallop shell shapes were common in and Alethea and this is the first time that they've been seen in Africa Ali what did nothing but the best what was ali ben youssef like is different from his father he is a liberal man I think that the reign of the Alaba Youssef is very important because with him we have a the development of architecture of crucial humanities poets and it is it's not the same the same character of his father this is a massive architectural statement in the palace grounds which shows just how far the Almoravids had come since their days as desert warriors bent on holy war but while Ally beautified the almoravid capital the kingdom was starting to slip from his grasp under ali the link to the desert tradition was broken and to some the almoravid seemed to be coming soft high in the mountains behind the city a force even more powerful than the Almoravids was stirring the fires of dissent were being stoked by rival Berbers holed up in the high atlas mountains this precarious mounting track leads to what was in effect their mountain hideout the armed rabbits were never comfortable in the hills and mountains of the high atlas and whenever they tried to root out trouble they were evaded there was plenty of trouble brewing here a new group of Islamic Revolution is laid the groundwork for their domination this whole region they were called the almohads meaning the people who believed in the unity of god the leader of the revolution was muhammad eben - mode he wasn't a desert warrior like the amaranthus he was a mountain bother even - mark had spent decades studying Islam he claimed to have been divinely chosen to restore the true faith as he understood it this is Tim Al the village where even to mark started his revolution from here he preached against the arrogance and corruption of the Almoravids professor Muhammad Roberta team has studied the power struggle that developed between the Almoravids and their fiercest critic Las Oct Malka a set a paw kleh ET en su CT / homo missile man even to Mars Lujan no Aldo de tomate NEPA fairly slam is a co o fella for L fell in doozy alpha the door Islamization de las casas de la CT no sukhiya fee Sitchin purity ratio de la adición mu fair opened only in legitimate a a symposium politic so your interpretation is that the religious manipulation of the text was something that even tumult was with spearheading as a way of changing regimes set object Eve dawn you see mo do si la ka Co the lagoon don't Eve Islamic don't la méditerranée oxy dantos ta la Deena Co lumpier Almohad so even 2-month wants to increase his political influence and then go down the mountain to attack Marrakesh Tiananmen a là-bas Europe wanted a park there Marcus even to mod undermined support for the Almoravids by questioning their interpretation of Islam therefore their claim to legitimate rule and he goaded ali ben youssef into combat in 1130 the battle of words finally turned to war and the army of the r-mo heads keep out of the mountains to face the armor evans and lay siege to their cities it would be a long campaign in Marrakech the city walls were reinforced and rebuilt by the am Rapids in direct response to the Elmo and friend a culture based or nomadic traditions and tents turned in its most desperate moment two huge walls like this to protect themselves but their ancient belief that walls imprisoned rather than protected proved true as it became increasingly confined to the city it took almost 20 years of skirmishing battles for the our Mohan's to finally enter the city of Marrakech and in 1147 the dynasty of the alma Ravitz was finally over once inside the city walls the our Mohan's wanted to stamp our authority on the city and they started by replacing the most significant of the armed ravaged buildings this is the ketubah mosque named after the Alka to bein or the booksellers who used to ply their trade here it's also Marrakesh is most important building you legend has it that the predecessor to this mosque was torn down by the amo heads because it wasn't correctly aligned with Mecca in fact all the mosques in the city were pulled down and replaced on religious grounds this sent a big bold message to the people of Marrakesh they were making it clear that their way and their interpretation of Islam was the correct one and anyone arriving in the city got a similar message this is the Bab Agnew or the gate of Guinea it was built by one of them to mark successes Sultan yaqoob L man saw in 1185 it's a beautiful gate this one so ornate this is an hour Moe head gate and it's so different early I just did a quick sketch of the Alma rabbit gate and the Alma Abbott gate is just one of those perfect very very simple gates but this one so different from the Alma rabbits and that modesty it's so much more sumptuous layers upon layers of decoration have been built up with this beautiful green stone this is an empire a kingdom that is very very pleased to announce it to everyone who enters the city almost everything the Almo has built seem more substantial more impressive than that built by their predecessors and that included the Berber Kingdom just like the rulers before them the ELMO had used marrakech as an imperial base for an expansion even more ambitious than their predecessors the amo had took over almost all the territory previously run by the armored aphids and they also seized the neighboring lands of Africa but stretched into what is now Libya in Spain they took handle a--there but made seville their second capital after Marrakesh under the arm Oh hands the kingdom was to become an even stronger force in the Mediterranean and the armor efforts have been and their wealth and ideas went hand in hand here in the bank of Maghreb is evidence to show how both dynasties use their currency to spread the world at his love this is a gold dinner yeah it's form surgeon Massa Omar dynasty I see that's beautiful with an Arabic in Arabic excusing the scriptures right in the center what does it say on there were many of wal islami dinan Fernando cobalamin who were with our purity Meena has healing it should not be acceptable that anyone takes a faith other than is now that's in the center of the coin so they're actually helping to evangelize those coins will circulate it of a lot of immediate Mediterranean Sea we have it in Spain in Portugal in London in Germany and Holland and China really yeah this was the dollar of it yeah of its deal yeah it's about trade but it's also taking wherever it goes religion because a lot of Christian Christian Kingdom used this coins at this time it's a beautiful thing absolutely beautiful the amethyst Deena was widely valued the almohads wanted to build on its success but they also wanted to do things differently they introduced innovations including a new callin with a square design that proclaimed ambition of their jihad so this one is the first around dirham mented by yamaha it's around but with a swirl in the middle but after this one saw head what okay that's square a square so they created these circular coins first with the square inscription in the center and then they reduced them down just to these squares technically in the mint of coins it's easy to do sometimes the coins which is is choir so these squares were much more efficient to be minted because there was much less wasted from a square sheet of silver it's worked it's amazing that that's just a tiny thin wafer of silver and yet it represents so much these four sides were seen as being symbolic of the four sides of the kingdom yeah of the different directions looking eastward yeah eastward towards India towards China looking north up toward Europe looking south towards the desert and west towards new opportunities but this is about an empire ex under the r-mo hats the Berber kingdom become extraordinarily powerful and wealthy they undertook increasingly ambitious projects to reflect the magnificence of their end these are the AG Bell Gardens in the grounds of the Royal Palace in Marrakesh almost a thousand acres of orange lemon fig apricot and pomegranate trees linked by olive lime wall plates all irrigated by water brought from the mountains over 20 miles away and I think they're beautiful we gorgeous place this is the amo head using water in such a luxuriant way I mean this setting was meant to be a place in which you could come and reflect on this landscape and what they're using are all the traditional constituent parts of Berber culture you have here water you have the palms you have olives you have fruit trees these are things that they would have had in their way sees but what they're using them for here is for recreation and just simply the people to come and reflect on the beauty of Berber culture and even today hundreds of years on who can doubt that they succeeded at the end of the 14th century the Muslim philosopher eben khaldoon wrote about the Berber state being just like a garden within this garden the government turned like a wheel he said that there was no justice without the monarch no monarch without the army no army without taxes no taxes without wealth and no wealth without justice giving cardoons vision of a garden in perfect balance highlighted just how interdependent these elements of government were justice was defined by the money who was supported by the army they were paid for by taxes that were generated by the wealth of its citizens while all of those things were in place had intimately connected the wheel could continue to turn and 240 miles north marrakech is a city that shows how well the system worked while it remained in perfect balance it's medina is probably the most complete medieval city center in the world a place that is changed little since the days of the almohads this is fairs one of the great cities of the Empire then as now a great center of trade from here they are Mohan traded in things like sugar cane and cotton like gold and copper and pottery but some of the most significant things they built him for ideas inspire their religious views the r-mo had were not intellectually repressive the ancient University of fairs attracted thinkers and scholars from right across the Mediterranean deep in the centre of the old medina is a Theological College it welcomed hundreds of scholars through its doors drew the gears of the r-mo a drain librarian Abubakar showed me some of the most priceless books in the collection and this volume is actually illuminated and that some of the words are picked out in golden this plate here written by urban to mark he describes in detail his interpretation of the finer points of the Koran oh you'd come in here obviously to learn but this is just so uplifting visually as well it's just such a privilege to see it's just the richness of it the heart anatomy and kavaalen or Haruka elmia caviar are so jealous with hot sauce real divorcee at mamata famous telefilm self-image le alpha curry I would say if I will type well fence afar orchid le forums area or battle Mahara one of the scholars he worked here perhaps surprisingly was Moses Maimonides still regarded as the most important Jewish philosopher for the past 2000 years and this beautifully bookworm ridden volume was written by another V intellectual Titans that were based here the Andalusian philosopher even Rashid known in Europe as a Burroughs Oh most famous for his commentary on the works of Aristotle he was a significant link between the ideas of ancient Greece and medieval Europe page after page but it's extremely delicate wafer-thin pages are his thoughts on Islamic law wherein 100 media tune was sure he'd wanna hire a mocked acid or kid 17 feet hadith surah al-fatah al-fatah any SD her auntie maybe if he made a novel be machete to leave it's fascinating because these are figures who talk about Islamic studies but they're putting it into a much wider intellectual con text here there are all of these great thinkers all working together and they're pushing philosophy pushing on astronomy pushing on a number of great disciplines further than anywhere else in the area around the Mediterranean 100 and then I feel fear Dini enough Fidelis lemme colossal to haul our hikmah and then hikmah here Darla to mean a Nevada and Hawaii pattern you taking any mechanics for Sofia well I had to Harvard and in a Fatiha cool little room so I can it's a loom Islamiyah O'Reilly Lamia always defeat mean how how will any you want day for happy fear or me these world just people who are interested in business in conquering their neighbors just look at this in you beating and they knew how to celebrate it these are exquisite box absolutely exquisite directly outside the college the atmosphere is peppered with the almost constant sound of hammer the Medina is still a place of work at the height of their mo had Empire phase had 372 mills nine thousand and eighty two shops 47 soap factories and a hundred and eighty eight pottery workshops this wasn't so much as a market town as a center of Industry and in one corner of the Medina is an H industry as old as the city itself finding and protecting the priceless books and their precious contents for some of the finest leather in the world and it still made today as it would have been during the almohads reign the skins are first scraped free of hair and fat then soaked in line bars before being softened in a mixture of guano water it's a process that is still remarkably neck what do you actually use to die Devon this is a herb that you're using to diet look at one harsh we interested as I be a hideous shock the village Oliver kissed an open deal this is all natural since this bright is a natural substance so this process literally has remained unchanged for hundreds of years the Reedy Amanda suggests then we'll get a look at regulators way before Henry Ford famously created this factory for assembling cars the Berbers Affairs already had a production intellectually and economically the our mole hands were in charge of an empire that ranked alongside the greatest of that time anywhere in the world was the high point of the Berber kingdom but controlling such a massive realm brought its own problems by the end of the 12th century this fought at the back overlooked in our martyr of ships at anchor their mo heads controlled substantial amounts of the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts and armies were being carried by sea to far-off battlegrounds seaports like Rabat had become crucial by the end of the 12th century the amo hads greatest ruler the Cobell man soon developed the town into his military headquarters first came the fortification of the old town with ramparts and gates and then in 1195 something really grand it had 400 colleges and pillars it was big enough to hold an entire army and it would have been the largest mosque in Islamic West if not the entire Muslim world as ambitious as the great Roman architecture of North Africa or the buildings of Mecca it spoke to their heritage and to God and it was as permanent a statement that could be made but we'll never know if this would have been the grandest mosque in the world as this isn't just a ruin it's an unfulfilled dream the reason why there's no top on the minaret or roof on the prayer hall here is that in 1199 only four years after work started Jakub al mansur died the mosque remained in this unfinished State his grand vision was never completed Elmen soul was the last strong leader of the almohads and his death marked a critical turning point with the beginning at the end of the our mohab dynasty squabbles over his succession allowed rival Berber tribes divided for power and the weakness at the center had repercussions further afield in Andrew fear a fundamentalist Christian crusade gained the upper hand against the equally fundamentalist you add the armor hats were humiliated by the Christians in a decisive battle in Spain from which their army never really recovered and the grip on Africa was lost as Arab tribes rebelled against the Elmo had rulers professor elf is has studied the factors that led to the decline of the r-mo had berber kingdom there are external factors Alma had army facing the Christian army in Spain they don't succeed they lost also the control of the Mediterranean Sea so on every front he is collapsing him economic factors are very important in the explanation of the decline they don't control the trade there is no money no budget to control population internally they lose their tax revenue as local people begin to turn against them the different ethnic groups then begin to fracture then fight against the regime and gradually the Empire begins to disintegrate but it is that kind of that wheel that problem of one of those factors breaking down means that the whole empire then begins to fail all these factors contribute in time to the collapse of this dynasty in 1269 ammo head rule ended when a rival berber dynasty seized power in marrakech the collapse of the r-mo head empire didn't happen overnight happened over decades but nothing that followed could come even close to what they had achieved none of the berber dynasties that succeeded the r-mo heads was powerful enough to rule North Africa attempts to return to the glory days of the almohads failed in the 16th century the Kingdom of Morocco was revived but this vast palace was built by a different dynasty claiming the right to rule as true interpreters of Islam then these people saw themselves as Arabic not bourbon the importance of Islam altered the identity of the kingdom the same religious zeal that have brought the African Berbers an Islamic empire had ensured that it would be an Arab dynasty claiming direct descent to the Prophet Mohammed that would rule the kingdom that the Berber had created an Arab dynasty is still in power today after five centuries of Arab rule many now think of Morocco as an Arab state with a current history this is a kingdom with roots for the distinctly Africa a group of indigenous nomads from the desert had achieved what no one else has ever done they United a disparate group of Berber peoples under the banner of Islam and created an African empire that stretched into Europe the Berber story deserves its place among the continents great histories this Friday here on BBC HD it's Bukka a cry from the rainforest the story of a pygmy tribe undergoing change and you can see that Friday night at 9:00 tonight how to get the nectar flowing in your own back garden bees butterflies and blooms next you

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